2D dry granular free-surface transient flow over complex topography with obstacles. Part II: Numerical predictions of fluid structures and benchmarking

Abstract

Dense granular flows are present in geophysics and in several industrial processes, which has lead to an increasing interest for the knowledge and understanding of the physics which govern their propagation. For this reason, a wide range of laboratory experiments on gravity-driven flows have been carried out during the last two decades. The present work is focused on geomorphological processes and, following previous work, a series of laboratory studies which constitute a further step in mimicking natural phenomena are described and simulated. Three situations are considered with some common properties: a two-dimensional configuration, variable slope of the topography and the presence of obstacles. The setup and measurement technique employed during the development of these experiments are deeply explained in the companion work. The first experiment is based on a single obstacle, the second one is performed against multiple obstacles and the third one studies the influence of a dike on which overtopping occurs. Due to the impact of the flow against the obstacles, fast moving shocks appear, and a variety of secondary waves emerge. In order to delve into the physics of these types of phenomena, a shock-capturing numerical scheme is used to simulate the cases. The suitability of the mathematical models employed in this work has been previously validated. Comparisons between computed and experimental data are presented for the three cases. The computed results show that the numerical tool is able to predict faithfully the overall behavior of this type of complex dense granular flow.